Host and Chalice Craft for Catholic Kids

I’ve been teaching art at our local Catholic Schoolhouse chapter, and while we were learning about positive and negative space, I snuck in this host and chalice craft in my older class (kindergarten and up). This would be a great craft for First Communion!

Did you pay attention to the negative space? The black should look like 2 faces facing each other. We traced the kid’s shadows to achieve this look, so each child’s project had their own profile making up the chalice. Tell the kids that the faces are looking in because our attention should be focused on the Eucharist during the consecration.

Supplies Needed:

1/2 piece of black poster board

1 yellow piece of paper

pencil

light

scissors

glue stick

glitter glue (could substitute markers or regular glue and glitter)

white paper

Jesus sticker or printed picture

I set up a station right in the classroom. We had a clamp on light, which worked out really well. In order to get a clear shadow, you want the child to sit close to the wall, but the shadow gets clearer as you move the light farther away. Turning off the extra lights will also help. Tape your paper to the wall, and then use the directions below to trace the shadow of the profile.

Fold the yellow paper in half long ways to trace your silhouette. Be sure that you trace the silhouette on the paper as indicated below if you want it to come out looking like a chalice.

Look at the picture above and note that when tracing the profile, the face needs to be pointing in towards the folded edge of the paper. You don’t want the profile like too far away from that folded edge or your chalice will end up with a really thick stand. The line for the neck will make a nice bottom to the chalice, but you don’t want a line for the shoulder, just let the neck fall off the bottom of the paper. As you trace up the face, once you get past the eye, curve the line in the opposite direction of the forehead and bring it straight up to make the top of your chalice. One the picture above, I’ve indicated where the shadow will be with a dotted line, but you won’t draw this. Just draw the chalice shape instead.

Once you have your shadow traced, let the kids cut along the line themselves.

Open up the middle piece to reveal your chalice!

Use a glue stick to attach this to your black poster board. Now you’re ready to add your host! This part of the craft was inspired by this chalice craft on Catholic Inspired. I loved how she incorporated a folding door with a picture of Jesus behind it! Such a clever way to portray the true presence of Jesus in the Eucharist! She has a great printable version on her site that’s free, so check it out if you’re looking for something a little less complicated.

We made our host into a little “book” to put Jesus inside. To do this, fold white paper in half, and find something the right size to trace a circle with (we used a bottle of glitter). Hang the circle off the folded edge a little bit, trace around, and cut it out. This will give you a nice circle-shaped book. Put a picture of Jesus inside, and glue the back over the host. Draw a cross on the front of the host with a pencil.

Once you have the chalice and host glued down, you can add jewels to the chalice with glitter glue. We also used glitter glue to make lines coming out all around the host.

Here are some of the completed projects from my class. (These were all done by children ages 5-8)

*Note* I designed this project to fit with the Catholic Schoolhouse curriculum, this is not one of the projects from the book.

I can’t tell you how much I love this idea! The 2 faces/vase illusion has special spiritual meaning to me. When made correctly as an optical illusion, it is only possible to see one of the images at a time — either the faces, or the vase. When times are difficult or I am feeling stuck, I think of this image and remind myself “there’s always another way to see things,” and I ask God to help me to “shift my vision” so I can see the alternate picture.

When I make shadow pictures of the kids, I get a much sharper, more recognizable image when I take a profile photo against a white wall, enlarge it to the size I want, and then print a b&w image to use as a template. This method works especially well for making silhouette gift pictures, too.

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